The Place Where the Sidewalk Ends
by WMisc
Summary: There's a place where the sidewalk ends, she knows, and before the street begins. Written for the Veritas Monthly Prompt Challenge: purpose. Drabbly.


_Written for the Veritas Award prompt for July: purpose; everyone has one, but some are harder to find than others._

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**The Place Where the Sidewalk Ends**

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There's a place where the sidewalk ends, she knows, and before the street begins. After all, how could there not be? Everything starts at _something,_ and likewise ends at it; hell, even if the two are connected so they both begin and stop _with_ each other, there's still _something_ there in the minute crack between them.

And this little chink in the world between the beginning and the end, Silena knows, is where the impossible happens.

Standing here now, looking at this gap, she doesn't doubt that for all of her life, her sole purpose had been to reach this place of the in-between. It's as if she'd been following the white arrows, chalk white arrows drawn by the gods above (literally; she's a _big_ believer of Greek mythology)–why, she's not sure of yet, but she suspects that this purpose is one that all living beings have deep within themselves.

The hole–it's more of a slit in the ground, really–is glowing faintly around its edges, and she peers closer, disregarding safety for curiosity. She knows it's probably rather careless of her–downright stupid, actually–to draw _closer_ to a mysterious shining crack in the ground, _especially_ after she's had a childhood of monsters appearing _out_ of the ground, but she's interested now, and there's no way that she can back away from it. So she leans in more and more, trying to see into the ground itself but only managing to blind herself in the light beaming up, trying to figure out _why_ there was a crack right here of all places. She looks around briefly. She's standing on the corner of the street, right where the sidewalk should've continued and where the road should've curved. Neither of these things had happened, clearly.

Somewhere above her, she hears a bird chirp in the dead quiet of the night. She ignores it, mostly because she's occupied in unwrapping a flattened peppermint candy that had somehow survived the rough journey here in her pocket; she hasn't had anything to eat for the past half-day, and she's _hungry_. Wind blows her hair into a tangled mess, whispering not sweet nothings into her ears but a voice, _her_ voice, reading from a battered, well-used book. She closes her eyes and breathes in the wind, seeing the memory happen again before her eyes: a younger self, speaking with some fluidity of a poem, _"For the children, they mark, and the children, they know, the place where the sidewalk ends."_

And she holds the old memory there for a moment, feeling the simple emotions from that time again, and letting it go with an exhalation of peppermint breath. She raises her head and exhales once more, watching with some fascination as her breath mists the image of the moon for a brief moment. Her old laugh from those precious childhood years rings out in the air (or is it just in her ears? She can't tell) and she remembers the childish belief that she knew everything worth knowing. The laughs, the giddiness that had infected her so easily in those years… it seems so incredulous to her now. Children could always find something to laugh about, something to whisper as a secret to another's ears, something to accomplish.

There's a line that she _knows_ all parents pass on (unsaid or not) to their children: _"Your generation is going to be the one fixing all of our problems. Your generation is going to be the one with all of the solutions."_

She feels the weight of that statement press down, _down_, on her shoulders, but she shrugs it off quickly, reminded of the weight she already has on her. Even now, here, at the literal in-between of the world, she feels the bony finger of the Fates, jabbing her as a painful gesture towards the forgotten crack in the ground.

And she realizes with that reminder of her own mortality that with every road comes an end; and after all, isn't death the end?

And she realizes that maybe, just maybe: maybe every living being's hidden purpose _is to die._

Bluntly put, that is.

She'd caused more problems than solutions in the world… So now maybe it was time for her to stop making things worse. Maybe it was time for her to die.

"'Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black, and the dark street winds and bends,'" she murmurs to herself, smiling a little at the fitting line but dropping it almost immediately when she fixes her attention on the glowing crack in the ground. "Well… Why not?"

As she disappears with a bright flash, her footsteps, paced with great care, become visible for but a moment – but they fade, just as she does.

_And somewhere far from where the sidewalk ends, a girl's body drops to the ground, beautiful face burned by a poison still no match for the signs of death in the distant eyes. It's a willing sacrifice, and Silena smiles despite the pain._

_She's smarter than most others this one instance; she knows that all will eventually reach to that one hidden purpose and wish for it to come._

_Where the sidewalk ends, she reaches for death._

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_Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,  
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,  
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know  
The place where the sidewalk ends._

– "_Where the Sidewalk Ends," Shel Silverstein_

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_Disclaimer: _I do not own, nor will I ever.

_Silena Beauregard's views on death and her hidden purpose. Purpose: everyone has one, but some are harder to find than others._


End file.
